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Monthly Archives: April 2014

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Two Saturday morning’s ago we loaded up our crew bright and early and headed over to Ava’s cemetery for their annual spring clean-up. Families typically don’t come along and help with the clean-up, but we had asked last year for them to include us and we are so glad they did. We feel a little kinship with this sweet country graveyard our baby is buried in – and working there felt like we were doing something for Ava, and as there isn’t anything we can actually do for her now, it felt good. 🙂

As we headed out there it was hard to not get teary. I hadn’t been to Ava’s grave since her birthday in December… the snow and the cold kept me away, but I do like going even though it’s not always happy. The first thing I did when I got there was head over to Ava’s grave and had my little cry. But after the initial sadness passed, I could just enjoy the day, helping with Jay and the kids and enjoying being outside.

We raked and raked some more, and picked up sticks and tidied up the place with the rest of the board members and some volunteers and it looked ready for spring by the time everyone had finished. There was even a group of students from a local high-school there helping and that touched my heart. One of their high school coaches is the grounds-keeper there and he asked them to come and they came, pretty cool.

Here are my boys working hard. Believe it or not the girls had already abandoned their rakes by this time and were playing….

I can’t tell you how good it is for my soul to have Ava’s final resting place in such a beautiful peaceful spot (It will be more beautiful in the coming months… honest). Perhaps because it is such a contrast to most of her life that was spent in the hospital in the big city. Most of her life couldn’t really be described as peaceful or beautiful, for her or for us. So even though it’s just her body and not her soul in this little country cemetery, it makes my heart very happy.

And we still miss her so much! It till hits us hard sometimes when we think of how she came into our lives and then went so quickly. But even through the grief, we can still say that we are convinced that God’s plans are for our best. Jason and I both never want to go back to being the people that we were before Ava – before we knew just how deeply we could trust God through the very hard times, and how faithful God is even when you feel like your world is falling apart.

And Easter was a great reminder of God’s love and sacrifice for us. In our Easter service we sang “In Christ Alone. Once again we sang those words that I had up on Ava’s wall at the hospital for so long…

No guilt in life, no fear in death, This is the power of Christ in me: From life’s first cry to final breath Jesus commands my destiny. No power of hell, no scheme of man, Can ever pluck me from His hand; Till He returns or calls me home, Here in the power of Christ I”ll stand.

So of course I cried and cried and cried, which is just fine as there is no room for pride at church – you need to park that at the door. But it just stood as another reminder that yes, what we believed then, we believe now. What we knew then, we know now. God is faithful & good and no matter how many springs come and go, He will get us through every one of them.

Amen!

No guilt in life, no fear in death—This is the pow’r of Christ in me;From life’s first cry to final breath,Jesus commands my destiny.No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,Can ever pluck me from His hand;Till He returns or calls me home—Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.

No guilt in life, no fear in death—This is the pow’r of Christ in me;From life’s first cry to final breath,Jesus commands my destiny.No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,Can ever pluck me from His hand;Till He returns or calls me home—Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.

No guilt in life, no fear in death—This is the pow’r of Christ in me;From life’s first cry to final breath,Jesus commands my destiny.No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,Can ever pluck me from His hand;Till He returns or calls me home—Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.

I’m coming to the realization that I probably have the worst memory in the entire world, but thank goodness I have kept a journal almost since I could write. This is a good thing, because when my brain fails me and won’t recall any memories of my kids when they were younger, I can go digging back through my journals. So I took a peek back and I found something I wrote about Will when he was just over 2 years old…

“And my Willy-baby – I just can’t get enough of him. With his blond hair and his love of cuddling – and how he gets so excited to see his dad when Jason comes home. How he loves to snuggle in before a nap and read stories with me, he makes these sounds of satisfaction and I could just eat him up.”

How things have changed and how things have stayed the same! I’m happy to say that he still loves to cuddle, is always happy to see us and still loves to read. But he’s growing up and he loves to write (like his mama?) loves to run and loves God, his friends and his family of course. (Although once in a while he would probably contemplate trading a sister for a dog).

You know that old saying that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone? Well I think that for Jason and I it rings true in a slightly different way. Losing a child has made us love and appreciate our remaining children that much more. God has certainly blessed us with 4 wonderful gifts.

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Welcome to our blog!

Thanks for stopping by. If you start reading you will see that we are mourning the loss of our of our sweet baby girl, Ava Samantha Grace, who died August 15, 2013. Our little 'Birdy' was born Dec 12, 2012 with a very serious congenital heart defect - hypo-plastic left heart - as well as Turner's syndrome. She had her first open heart surgery at two days old and died in hospital waiting for a heart transplant.

As well, we are learning to live with our daughter Sarah's with type 1 diabetes which is more challenging than I ever thought it would be.

We believe that all of our children are precious gifts from God and have been so thankful for them.
God is good and through all this we are focusing on our blessings.
We're so glad you joined us.